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Dels. David Kelly, R-Tyler, and Trenton Barnhart, R-Pleasants, were right to loudly express their concern with the enshrinement of a tax calculation process that has proven so flawed it resulted in a $30 million "clerical error" that affected theirs and six other natural gas producing counties.
"The story was 'whatever you do, don't say it was (a) mistake,'" said Kelly, who is House Judiciary Committee vice chairman. "Well, ladies and gentlemen, what else can it be but a mistake? And at that point, it was more than a mistake. It was negligence."
"I cannot and I will not vote to enshrine a process that we know there's been problems with and that we know hasn't been implemented right," Barnhart said. "We need to get the stakeholders back together, fix this process, and lessen the harm that it has already (been) done."
Calling the mistake negligence might feel like an understatement to the officials in counties now scrambling to figure out how to clean up the mess made -- reportedly by a third-party vendor.
But, as House Finance Committee Chairman Del. Vernon Criss, R-Wood, pointed out, lawmakers were under orders by the state Supreme Court to fix the previous way the Tax Division determined the value of natural gas-producing property because THAT method violated the state Constitution. Moving backward in that effort might lead to another run-in with the court.
It seems, then, as though Criss and other lawmakers were not willing to let the Tax Division get away with a ploy similar to a youngster who breaks the dishes in order to get out of washing the dishes.
Representatives of the eight counties affected by the Tax Division's negligence can take solace in the decision only if it is followed by a strict plan for forcing the Tax Division to get its house in order -- and that includes double-checking the work of third-party vendors.
A "clerical error" made by a third-party vendor may not seem like a big deal to those in most counties, but to residents of Tyler County, for example, it's a $15.8 million deal. For Brooke County, it was more than $4 million. Lawmakers and leaders in the Tax Division must now prove they aren't ignoring the challenge created for those counties by doubling down on efforts to ensure it never happens again.